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| Reform of Parks Is
Only a Spasm
Law and Order League Investigators Report Bad Features Restored. Quote from a "Barker." Amusement Places Said to Resent Messages from Reform Organization. Source: Chicago Daily Tribune, 5 August 1909, pg. 3. After a brief spasm of reform the amusement parks of the city have returned to their former ways, according to reports of investigators of the Chicago Law and Order league. Dances of the kind objected to in former reports are given freely, say the investigators who quote from the announcements of the "barkers," who have forgotten that the police said they mustn't. An attitude of defiance is maintained, it is declared, by the park managers, who resent the "buttin in" of the Law and Order league. On Monday Mr. Farwell sent a letter containing a number of reports to the management of Riverview park, and received a reply intimating that the league had nothing to say about it. Another report was mailed last night by Mr. Farwell to the management of the same park with a reminder that an agreement was made with the police that such reports should be made to the managers. This report contained the observations of an investigator who visited Riverview Monday night. "Barker's Spiel" at Park. The report quotes from the "spiel" of a "barker" at the "Streets of Cairo" as made from stenographic notes as follows: "Ladies and gentlemen, before I start the outside I want to say a few words regarding this show. This is an oriental dancing show to the limit. This is not a bible class. We don't have them here. The management of the park does not pay for the privilege of holding bible classes and Sunday school. I have never heard of a bible class being held in Riverview. "If you are looking for such things you are in the wrong place. You ought to be at a Salvation army hall or at a church. An amusement park is no place for you. "These girls do not dance with their feet. You remember reading of a dance held a long time ago in which a girl wore a smile, a bracelet, and seven veils and danced about a head; and every time she danced about the head she took off a veil until she got to the seventh-- and then ma grabbed pa by the arm and took him home. "We haven't got that dance. Neither do we have the one that is danced by a girl who escaped from a box factory-- that jelly fish dance. But we have an oriental show t the limit. Smoking and chewing goes and you can go as far as you want." Women in Noisy Audience. About 100 were in the audience, according to the report, thirty of whom were women. They were noisy and addressed the dancers with such remarks as "Hello, Rosie." They shouted and screamed, says the investigator, when a dancer stopped in front of them and began a special performance. At the Duncan Clarke show the report said the female impersonator who was arrested by the police but found not guilty was again doing his sensational dance. Mr. Farwell refused to state what program had been laid out by the Law and Order league, but declared that the men employed were not collecting all this evidence for nothing. Mr. Farwell during the day also, through the Hyde Park Protective association, which has been working for nineteen years to drive saloons from Hyde Park, renewed the fight by sending letters to 120 ministers and priests in that district in an effort to prevent the reopening of a saloon on the southwest corner of Fifty-fifth street and Lake avenue. The letter is signed by Arthur Burrage Farwell, secretary of the association. It asks the ministers and priests to write to Mayor Busse and to ask their parishioners to do the same requesting the mayor not to issue any more new licenses to saloons in Hyde Park. |
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Page authored: 5
August 2000 -
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